The Genius

by Margaret Horton Potter

Throughout the ensuing winter he taught all morning six days in the week, reserving his composing for the hours of early morning and evening. After his midday meal, he came into the habit of taking long tramps through the streets of the poorer quarters, resting himself in little traktirs, finding unhealthy companionship in the patent discontent, poverty, and misery of the laboring class. By five o'clock he was in his own rooms again, and from then till ten he worked at piano and desk, a samovar bubbling at his elbow. Promptly at the hour, the new manuscript pages, beautifully finished, were locked away; and the piano closed. Then, in the shadowy corners of his bedroom, devils began to stir, and creep about, uneasily, waiting for their victim's nightly attendance at his own torture, where he was set upon in some one of their hundred ways. Fevered brain, weary body, tumbled bed; loneliness, regret, heart-hunger, unsated ambition; most of all a longing for loving arms to close about him, words of comfort and courage to come through the darkness that thrilled only to his own stifled sighs—thus the night, with its long dance of horned, fire-eyed beings, who held captive all his angels of mental health, faith, hope, joyous life. And so at last the presage of morning, when, for an hour or two, sleep would free him from the bondage of his inner life—that ugly prison, whose black walls were unbeautified by time, unsoftened by the clinging vines of memory; whose stones were but made darker by the shadow of the banner floating over all: the black flag of that "Tosca" that has unfurled itself above so many of the world's great.

Autumn bursts of rain had whitened into snow. Moscow was now a city of dazzling purity topped by steep roofs and domes of gold and azure and water-green, so filling the air with brightness that one minded less the persistent leaden gray of the vault overhead. But cold and grayness are bad companions for the morbid-melancholic; and Ivan took his tone from the clouds, steadily repulsing the gentle efforts of his friends to draw him from his dim retreat into sunny mental climes.

The holidays went by, and Ivan began to realize that a few more weeks would bring about a necessary farewell to two more of his brain-children. It was the 2d of February before the Ophelia tone-poem lay before him finished, polished to the last point of perfection. Another week and "Isabella"—Kashkine's translation, his own score—would receive its last stroke of the pen. Ivan waited till that moment came, then laid his two beloved companions side by side in their cabinet, turned the key, and left them there, while he fared forth into the frozen night, his brain at last as empty as his heart.

There remained, however, the fierce desire to place his children well. The Ophelia he carried to Balakirev and Nicholas Rubinstein, who sat over it one whole night examining, discussing, rejoicing at its splendor, its delicacy, the perfection of the reconceived masterpiece. Next morning Nicholas sent its composer word that he would play it at the fifth concert of his regular series, on the afternoon of March 4th. And Ivan was satisfied; for these concerts were the musical events of Moscow; and the new work was assured of a performance as perfect as he could desire: an audience as distinguished as it was ably critical.

This arranged, and one rehearsal—at which technical difficulties loomed large before both men and conductor—impatiently endured, all Ivan's mind was given up to considerations for the placing of his opera. Merelli, he knew well, was thirsting for it: would make it his feature of the next year's season. Should he insist, it would even be rushed through during the spring. But he was not in haste. Moreover, folly though it was, he had already, some time ago, begun to desire a petty triumph: a piece of retribution for the man who had more than once brought him dire suffering. He wanted unstinted praise for a new work from his old master, the implacable Zaremba. Since the success of "The Boyar" he could certainly not be put off with a hasty reading and a damning criticism of the new score. His peculiar style, many a time torn and ridiculed by Zaremba and the great virtuoso, had now been applauded by the entire Russian musical world: was beginning to be recognized beyond the frontier. Certainly it was no longer within range of one man's malice. So far, no ear but Ivan's had heard "Isabella"; no eye but his had beheld the pages of that score which, by the after-judgment of five nations, remains unsurpassed in the history of opera save by the music-dramas of one Richard of Bayreuth. Already, in his heart, Ivan knew the value of his work. But his nature, ever prone to self-depreciation, never wholly believing in his own power till another had assured him of it, cried out for confirmation of his secret hope. With the stamp of Zaremba's approval, Petersburg, first city in the land, would crowd to hear his work; and it would come to Moscow, to his father, with a double reputation.—In fine, on the morning of February 15th, a letter and a registered parcel left Moscow for the north, addressed to the Director of the Petersburg Conservatoire:—who was at present in a condition of nervous irritability that kept his every pupil in a state of petrified wretchedness throughout the working day.

Miserable Ivan! Zaremba too—even Zaremba, was in the throes of composition! He was attempting a work as far beyond his creative powers as are the harmonies of Wagner beyond the quaint simplicities of olden-time Scarlatti. Wretched Ivan! Relentless circumstance!—To this monster of vanity, vain ambition, malicious jealousy, went the masterpiece of an offending pupil.

However, happily, Ivan was not clairvoyant. The satisfactory close of his long period of labor brought with it a state of passive languor. A quiet numbness replaced the acute sensitiveness of his nerves, and made him for the nonce impervious to his devils, though it could not prevent his inner sense of loss. For the creator who has lived for many months in daily communion with the living creature of his imagination, cannot, if he work as artists must, but come into a state of great and secret love for his dream-images. The feeling is sacred, indeed; for what dweller in Philistia but would scoff at such a sentimentality as love for work, and unhappiness at its conclusion? Nevertheless it is true that, when the hour of triumph, the finishing of a long, successful creation is accomplished, and eager Philistia waits clamoring to enjoy it, its master knows well that his hour is over: that his good-bye must be said. His child, stared at, listened to, conned by ten thousand eyes, ears, or tongues, is his no more; cannot return to him; for it is of the world, and the dream between them is dissolved.

This had come to Ivan. His two friends were gone from him to other men. His whole being cried out for rest; but his heart was empty.

A week's desultory waiting, however, suddenly brought an episode that turned his mind in another direction. Nicholas Rubinstein sent him a troubled missive, asking his presence at the next rehearsal of Ophelia. Anxiety stared from every line of the brief note; and, after some hesitation, and a very bad half-day, Ivan presented himself at the Grand Theatre; where he instantly found himself the centre of an uproar. The new tone-poem was impossible. Concertmeister, head of second violins, all the heads of the other bodies, swarmed to him, each pointing out the various passages deemed by them either unplayable or unmusical; and, finally, the whole number came to an agreement of scorn regarding one fantastical episode—an analysis of Hamlet's yearning to know the mind of his father, and a suggestion of his own indecision and unbalanced mentality. This, a passage of some thirty bars, was universally declared to be contrary to every known law or license possible to composition.

To this superior, scoffing company of weaklings Ivan, always gentle-mannered, shrinking from argument or petty conflict as other men from a nagging woman's tongue, undertook, by rehearsing, to explain his heart's work. Had it not been for Nicholas, he would soon have left the field to his opponents. Upborne by the conductor, he did manage to endure two rehearsals. The evening after the second, however, found him, haggard and white-faced, in the old apartment, pleading with Rubinstein, in the presence of Laroche, to give the whole thing up, to strike his name from the programme.